Principal wants Gov’t’s financial input in teacher training

WESTERN BUREAU:

Ricardo Bennett, the principal of the Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College (SSTC), St James, wants the Government to provide financial assistance to tertiary-level students who want to become teachers.

Speaking to journalists following SSTC’s media launch of its 50th anniversary celebration on Monday, Bennett said that the school is willing to provide training for anyone who is given that opportunity and wants to take it on.

“Teacher migration is really not anything new for Jamaica and other countries across the globe. What we believe must happen is that the State must provide more opportunities for persons who want to teach, and to get that financial assistance to start their programmes,” said Bennett. “We know that at the end of the training, some of them will leave our country, and that is something that I believe we do not have a lot of control over.”

“What our Government must respond to, is that we must train more, particularly in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) areas. We see that there is a global demand for STEM-trained teachers, so what we are asking is that more assistance should be provided, whether through scholarships, grants or bursaries, for persons who want to study,” said Bennett. “We are saying here at SSTC, once we are given that opportunity to meet that demand, we will respond, we will train them; and once they have that desire to be trained, we will open our gates, our doors, our classrooms, and our lecture rooms to provide that training.”

Teacher migration has been a worrying issue for Jamaica’s education sector, as teachers have been leaving in droves for better-paying jobs overseas.

Last month, Dr Garth Anderson, dean of the Teachers’ Colleges of Jamaica (TCJ), said the island’s teacher-training institutions are suffering from a lack of applicants as a result of the cost to pursue their studies, and the inadequate salaries they receive once they enter the local classrooms.

Bennett said that the SSTC has not experienced any significant shortfall in candidates for teacher training, and that the institution has increased its marketing campaign to attract more students.

“The matter of teacher shortages is quite known across the island, and we are happy that at SSTC, we have not seen any major falloff in enrolment. What we have done, is that we have listened to the voice of the public, and we have increased marketing, which has led to the rise of new programme offerings,” said Bennett.

“The business studies programme is something we are very proud of, and we see a demand, particularly in western Jamaica, for more persons to be trained in the field of business process outsourcing to meet some of the glaring demands in the sector. Also, many of our students, and prospective students, are not able to study in the full-time programme, so we have seen a sharp rise in our part-time offerings through our School of Continuing Education,” Bennett explained.

The SSTC, which currently has over 800 students on its register, is aspiring to have 250 fully trained teachers graduating from its programmes of study annually.